ANDERNOS - The four players for the semi-finals in the Classic Race Challenge, organized by CEB and Kozoom, are the French players Willy Gérimont, Brahim Djoubri and Johann Petit and the Belgian Patrick Niessen. The first semi-final is between Niessen and Gérimont at 10.00 this Sunday morning, the second semi-final between Djoubri and Petit at 12.00. The winners play the final at 15.00. Marek Faus was eliminated with the best overall average. Willy Gérimont and Brahim Djoubri are the two players who remained unbeaten.
Some scores of the first two days in the double knock-out: on Friday in the first half, 2240 points were made in five games, with ten performances over one hour of play. That means 224 points per hour for all the 8 participants. In the second half, 2362 points were made in five games, 236 points per hour.
The best score on Saturday came from Marek Faus in his match with Magali Declunder: 314 for the Czech, 212 for the French player, who managed to threaten her opponent for more than 40 minutes in a high-level match. Marek Faus only extended his lead to 100 points at the end of the match: 314 against 213, Faus with a run of 171, Declunder with running 132.
Another strong performance came from Willy Gérimont in his qualification match for the last four against Johann Petit: 302 against 262.
The match between Brahim Djoubri and Patrick Niessen was a real Hitchcock thriller. The two players remained close throughout the match. The French player missed in the end with one minute to go and got a 90-second penalty, which made him unable to play in the final moments. The Belgian was seven points behind (232-225). The mission in the last minute for Niessen was to score seven times, but he missed after three points under pressure of the stopwatch.
In the last two qualification games of the double knock-out, Johann Petit won his match against Marek Faus 214-171 and Patrick Niessen outplayed Pascal Dessaint 230-196.